Some day when I have time,
I'll go through cuke.com and my archives and get all the comments about this
event, (one of the most remembered and reported) on this page. Till then you could
Google: <steiner site:www.cuke.com> - dc

Question period after lecture, Sokoji. Various questions, I
remember Janet asking about "laughing and crying in emptiness". Roshi
repeated the phrase a couple of times, as though not understanding, and
started to laugh. He laughed, and then the audience started to laugh. Still
laughing, Roshi said, "you are laughing. That is laughing in emptiness."
Then he told a beautiful story about a pregnant female monkey, confronted by
a hunter, who cried "in emptiness" for the hunter to spare her young.

I was very much into peace movement, draft resistance
things, at the time, and I asked, "Roshi, what is war?" "War?" he said. "War
is like these goza mats, when two people want to sit on one mat, and try to
smooth out the wrinkles on their side pushing them to the other side. When
the wrinkles meet, that is war."

This started a complicated discussion about the peace
movement, whether it was right to march in demonstrations, resist the draft,
etc. There was one person in the back who kept asking complicated questions
about the peace movement, which organization was better, using movement
slang and hippie jargon. Roshi couldn't understand him very well, and John
S. took on the function of translating the questions for this guy so Roshi
could understand. Roshi kept trying to answer the questions very patiently,
but suddenly he jumped up like a bat out of hell, rushed off the stage and
hit John S. eight or ten times as hard as he could. He shouted something
like "What are you dreaming?" to everyone. He went back and sat down and
waited for a few moments. "I'm not angry," he said, although he looked very
angry. Then he went on to say something about he was not selling zazen as
the right way (the question John Steiner asked that provoked Suzuki Roshi to
hit him was: "Well Roshi, what is the right way?"), that our practice wasn't
like that.

John Steiner was all upset about the war in Vietnam and you know a lot of
young people didn't want the war and the government did want it and there
was a lot of mess about that - and John was in a frenzy about the whole
thing and he was asking a question and his eyes were popping out and he was
really upset and he said what can I do?! And Suzuki Roshi said, Gasho! Gasho!
Gasho! and he came down off of the raised area where he was standing
speaking with his short straight flat stick and he started batting John till
John was sinking to the floor and then he said, now get up, you know what
you can do!" Oh! it was something! He could settle people's bullshit so
easily. I'm not saying John didn't have a right to be upset but Suzuki Roshi
unupset him. He taught a lot of people a lot by doing things like that.

DC: One way to look at this is that Suzuki Roshi couldn't express himself to the person who
asked the question, so he used you. His response was not just for you of
course but was for everyone. I know of other situations in which he used
that sort of tactic in public situations: hitting Dick or Philip in front
of others. Itís traditional.

Katherine Thanas remembers: Reb told the story about John Steiner
getting hit with the stick - he asked what should we do about it or
something - about the war - and Suzuki Roshi got off his seat and Reb said
he hit him so hard he fell over although I don't remember hearing he'd hit
him that hard.